The holidays always seem to do me in, especially when they involve traveling. I always plan to keep it somewhat healthy, and I fail every time. Valentine’s Day was no exception to this rule. If anything, it was probably one of the worst 180’s I have done over a holiday period that only is supposed to last a day. I could blame the fact that Valentine’s Day turned into a weekend affair that included a last-minute trip to Heavy and Light on Monday evening, where I indulged in fast food for the first time in at least three months. I could do that, but I know that the majority of the choices were done because I thought I could get away with it. It’s like I get it inside my head that calories don’t count over the holidays.

But alas, the calories always count, and my lack of exercise had me feeling sluggish at the gym yesterday. I did about 5 miles on the stationary bike and called it a day, no strength training at all. This was a major fail on my part, and it will be remedied this afternoon. While the movie selection at the gym this week is particularly lacking, I am hoping to get some major strength training done today, and perhaps a few miles on the bike. Being Wednesday, it is a day to focus on the upper body, but I will probably throw in a few squats and other leg moves. I have discovered that some of the weight machines are more enjoyable than one might be led to believe.

As for the restart headline, I am restarting my healthy plans this week, focusing on weightloss more than I did while I was getting accumulated to the gym. I am at a current weight of 210, and I have a goal weight of 160. I have lingered around my current weight for at least a couple of years now, and I am ready to get rid of the final fifty. I know this will take the type of dedication I have to dig down deep for, but I am hoping that my small group of supporters will be enough to push me across the finish line. In order to do this, I will be uping my gym workouts every few weeks and following the rules of Bob Harper’s The Skinny Rules. It should be noted that I am slowly working on the “no carbs after 2 rule”. I’m trying, but it’s all a matter of keeping low carb snacks around the house for when I get home from work and finding protein supplements with low carbs. I’ll do an update next Wednesday on how this is going.

Tomorrow will be a gym day instead of running, as I am planning to attend an open house at Southeastern University. Hopefully that goes well and doesn’t turn everything I want to do upside down…but let’s be honest, it probably will.